Upon passing a sign that looked a whole lot like the one pictured above, Rand turned to me and said, “Is there really caribou crossing for the next two miles?”

Teehee. No, but it was a genuine Elk crossing zone.

As you may or may not remember, I hail from Elk County, PA. And you can indeed see genuine Elk there. Back when I was a beat reporter, I had to cover Benezette Township, which is the heart of elk viewing. (and not much else. Believe me.) But I did once come face-to-face with a real live elk on one of my jaunts down to Benezette. I don’t know if you have any concept of how big these animals are, but let’s just say that in a showdown with my car, my car would definitely lose.

Elk are large animals, weighing from 500 to 800 pounds.

Oh, dear lord…there’s a live Elk Cam.

From About.com…Recommended elk viewing sites:

Winslow Hill – The most visited elk viewing site in Pennsylvania, with two established viewing areas, off-road parking, and portable restrooms. Other wildlife also commonly seen. Location: Winslow Hill Road, 3 miles from its intersection with Route 555 in Benezette.

An actual view from the Winslow Hill viewing area:

And here are some other links…

The Pennsylvania Elk Herd
PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources
Pennsylvania Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

And I’m sure that’s more than you ever wanted to know about elk. 😉

Pretty accurate for a five-second quiz, eh? 🙂

Thanks to Rand for sending this to me. 🙂

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but this quiz came up in conversation because I left the “to be” out of a sentence while talking to Rand the other night. I browsed through the “You know you’re from….when” and found this under “Central PA”:

Your version of the English language contains no form of the verb to be. For example, “the car needs washed” instead of “the car needs to be washed”.

So I come by it naturally. 😉

Hey, faithful readers…

Head over to Caren’s blog. She’s raising money for an excellent cause, and for $35, you can get one of her awsome handbags! Wish I had the $35, ’cause I’d love one, but I may just have to settle for making a donation.

Please help her out if you can, and spread the word!

Yeesh.

I’ve been having an incredibly lazy week…calling each evening to see if I have to report for jury duty. And no, I have not had to report for jury duty. However, we are nearly up to my number for tomorrow, which is inconvenient considering that I got a call for a teaching job interview tomorrow. Fortunately, after being treated extremely rudely by someone at the commissioner of jurors’ office, I was told to report on Monday. Phew.

Monday, I slept in, accompanied Rand and his friends John and Amy to a long and leisurely lunch at Gabriel’s Gate. I luuuuuuuurve The Gate. And I disovered something new…they have good dessert! I ordered cheesecake with raspberry sauce, and oh my GOD. It was divine. It was good and creamy, just the way I like it, not that harder, cakier type.

I got a haircut, got my lip and brows sugared (far superior to waxing, IMHO), made a bank run for Rand…and yesterday, I decided to make cookies.

Several weeks ago, Jen and I ventured into the Lexington Co-op, and I spied a bag of chocolate ginger…mmmm…so I got it, but was kind of disappointed to find that the pieces of ginger were much too small. I might as well have been eating a bag of chocolate chips, I said.

Hmmm…

Of course, then it got WAY too hot to turn on the oven. But now the temperature is comfortable enough to bake. We were out of a couple of things, so I had to run to the store. This was sort of funny…I stopped at the mini mart on the corner to pick up a small can of Crisco. They only had one left, and this was the price on it:

$312c.

The girl at the checkout looked at it, and said, “That can’t be right.” I shrugged. “Let’s make it $2.49,” she said. Fine with me. 🙂

I found a recipe for “Chocolate Ginger Cookies,” which were really just chocolate chip cookies with chopped ginger in them. Perfect. They turned out pretty well, I think.

Bit of trivia I learned on the radio today…Anthony Head (Giles from Buffy) is Murray Head’s brother. Who knew? Well, apparently Rand did. 😉

I’ve got my friend Jennifer’s wedding picnic this weekend, so Rand and I will be heading out of town tomorrow evening after he’s done working. That should be a good time. 🙂

Oh, and head over to All Things Jen(nifer) to see the photo of us from last Saturday that made it onto Buffalo Barfly! Heehee…

Seriously. I don’t know what the temperature is right now, but it’s absolutely gorgeous. Sunny, warm, soft breeze, low humidity. I think I might have to get out for a walk and enjoy it!

So this is the week that my postponed jury summons was up. I’m juror #13something, and thus have not had to report yet. I may have to tomorrow…we shall see. So the past two days I’ve been loafing. 😉

We had a most excellent weekend. On Saturday, we took Susan out to Cozumel for dinner (I had the blackened salmon caesar salad…my appreciation to Rand for introducing me to this-yum!) and drinks…and more drinks…Jen and I each ordered a margarita on the rocks when we sat down, forgetting that we were supposed to order the grande margarita. It is infinitely better. Jen got the grande on her second, I went to strawberry. Stephanie introduced us to a new drink–the purple rain. Basically, a purple rain is a long island iced tea, but instead of adding coke, you add chambord. So yes, it’s pretty much a big old glass of alcohol.

We’d brought with us a big box of plastic leis…our goal, to “lei” people in exchange for a drink or shot for the bride (or any bridesmaid…ahem…) I’d have to say it was a fairly successful venture. I did not do any shots, which is probably a very good thing.

Susan and her soon-to-be family members headed home around 1. The bridesmaids, however, still wanted to party. We went over to Roxy’s for some dancing. I had to drag my roommie off the dance floor at about 2:30 so that we could put Stephanie to bed. 😉

I understand that Susan had a great time, but paid for it a bit on Sunday. Sorry, sweetie!

There’s actually a fun Friday story, but I don’t feel like going there right now. Maybe later. 🙂 For now, I’m off to enjoy the sun!

Please note the new image/icon on my sidebar and visit Buffalo Rising for the details. 🙂

We want to help build the nascent buzz about New Buffalo and thought these badges would be a great way to start. Spurred by an idea of BuffaloPundit’s, we want to encourage folks to pass on the message and create the potential for growth in it�s exposure and influence.

The message:
Love it for the place it really is…
Help make it the place it ought to be.
This is New Buffalo.

If you are a resident or supporter of WNY, help spread the word!

Out on the town tonight with the girls…see Jen’s blog for more details, and watch for an update after we recover! Heehee…

I have a bunch of scribbled down notes of things I’ve wanted to blog about, so here goes. Hang on tight. 😉

1. Team America: World Police
I watched this with Rand last week. It was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be. The songs totally rocked. My favorite was “Pearl Harbor Sucked, and I Miss You.” “Montage” was pretty cool as well. 🙂

2. Subbing at the end of the school year…oh my GOD. The kids are insane. They’ve either completely checked out or are bouncing off the walls. Last week in that AIS class, I had a girl who was spelling things in sign language to the kid across the table from her. Clearly, they were inappropriate things. I had another kid (high school) get all smart-assed with me when I asked him to keep his voice down.

“That’s why I would never be a substitute teacher,” another student said.

In this same class, I noticed one of the students’ papers that they were working on during class. Their task was to read an essay, and with a partner, evaluate and make suggestions for improvement. The student wrote “could use better English skillz.”
Yes, he spelled skills with a Z. Sigh.

And speaking of subbing at the end of the school year, my lord, are schools HOT. Ugh. See, most schools in this neck of the woods are not air conditioned but for certain areas (library, cafeteria, faculty room, office), so for a few weeks at the beginning and end of the school year, classrooms are a miserable place to be. Ugh.

3. Jack FM
Buffalo has its very own Jack FM station! 92.9. It truly is like playing iTunes on shuffle…its beauty is in its randomness. The cheese factor is pretty high, so if you can’t deal with cheese, you probably want to stay away. 😉 But honestly, on what other station can you hear “Land of Confusion” and “Dancing Queen” back to back?

4. The Girl with the Silver Eyes
I loved this book when I was a kid. *Loved* it. Today, I saw it in the classroom where I was subbing and wanted so badly to pick it up and read it again. I really need to get a new copy of it…mine was left in the attic of my parents’ house.

And finally…

5. Buffalo is the 3rd Cleanest City in America
Yeah, I’m behind on this one…check out the full story at Buffalo Rising. 🙂

I was inspired by a post I saw over at Buffalo Rising to finally write the post I’ve been writing in my head for months about what it is that drew me to (and has kept me in) Buffalo.

Back in 2000, I was living in my small Western PA hometown, which was a perfectly fine place to grow up…but as a mid-twentysomething, I was finding it disappointing. Almost everyone I knew had moved away. I had almost no social life, a job that was okay but certainly not worth sticking around for, and dating? Ha.

My dear friend Jen(nifer) was here and kept repeating the “move to Buffalo” mantra until I listened. 😉

Despite a couple of disappointing career experiences at the beginning, I started to like it here. I started to feel at home here. One of the things I like best about Buffalo is that it’s a city that *feels* like a small town. People are friendly. During the Blizzard of 2001 (the one around Christmastime), when I got stuck at the end of my street because I had to go work at the evil financial institution (money transfers do not stop for snow!), a couple of neighbors helped dig me out. And while I’m not the biggest fan of snow (at least snow that lasts for six months), I can think of worse weather phenomena to deal with. 😉

While I know that there are people who think I’m crazy for sticking with this city now that I have a teaching degree (you’re trying to get a teaching job in Buffalo? *gasp*), I can think of plenty of compelling reasons to stay. Here are a few of them:

Delaware Park

Shakespeare in Delaware Park

Thursday at the Square

Toronto: only 102 miles away

Home (my family): only 124 miles away

The Low

Shea’s Performing Arts Center

The Elmwood Strip

Allentown

The Allentown Art Festival

Jackdaw (and loads of other great music)

The Albright-Knox

The food

Good friends

not to mention a certain someone special…

As Jen said when we were talking one day, I’m 90% happy. 😉 I just need that job to push me over the edge…and yes, while I know I could easily get a teaching job elsewhere, elsewhere is not where I want to be.

I want to be here. And I’m willing to fight for it.
🙂